http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com --
WHEN I first heard that Larry
Ellison, the CEO of Oracle
Corp., had proposed a
national I.D. card to help
fight terrorism, I thought it
was a joke. Not the I.D. card
idea. But that Ellison was
proposing it.

Flash back to June 2000,
when The New York Times
and The Wall Street Journal revealed that Oracle had hired
private detectives to spy on rival Microsoft in the most
unsavory ways, including, the Associated Press noted, "a
$1,200 offer to janitors to get a peak at the trash." Ellison
was utterly unapologetic - in fact, flippant. He said he
personally approved the operation and called it a "civic
duty," adding, "Some of the things our investigator did may
have been unsavory. Certainly from a personal hygiene
point, they were. I mean, garbage…yuck." Is this a man to
trust with the software for tens of millions of identification
cards?

Even Dan Gillmor, tech columnist for The San Jose Mercury
News and a strong critic of Microsoft, called Oracle's spying
a "scandal." That's why it's so incredible that Attorney
General John Ashcroft and officials of the FBI and CIA took
valuable time to meet with Ellison to discuss the I.D. card
proposal he laid out in an interview with a San Francisco
radio station KPIX and later in an op-ed piece in The Wall
Street Journal.

"It just sort of crosses the line of good taste," said Richard
M. Smith, chief technology officer of the Privacy
Foundation.

Ellison proposes bringing information from "myriad
government databases [such as Social Security and
law-enforcement records] together in a single national file."
And Oracle will provide the software for free "with no
strings attached," he offered. Ellison, in his Journal article,
contends that we do not need "one national I.D. card." But
that's certainly what his proposal sounds like.

"A national database combined with biometrics,
thumbprints, hand prints, iris scans, or other new
technology could detect false identities," he wrote.
"Gaining entry to an airport or other secure locations would
require people to present a photo I.D., put their thumb on a
fingerprint scanner and tell the guard their Social Security
number. This information would be cross-checked with the
database."

It's a shame that Ellison has become the leading spokesman
for this idea because it is worth serious consideration. Even
Alan Dershowitz, the lawyer and civil libertarian, is now
advocating a national I.D. card. He says it should be
optional. "Anyone who had the card could be allowed to
pass through airports or building security more
expeditiously, and anyone who opted out could be
examined much more closely." Ellison also wants voluntary
cards, with non-holders subjected to more rigorous
searches. But that's a little disingenuous. In effect,
everyone who did not want to be severely hassled would
have to have a card - and, frankly, although a civil
libertarian myself, I don't think that's such a terrible
concept.

After all, you can't get on a plane today without a driver's
license or a passport. A national high-tech I.D. card would
perform the same function but with a great deal more
accuracy and security. A recent Pew Center survey found
that, by 70 percent to 26 percent, Americans backed a
system to require "citizens to carry a national identity card
at all times to show a police officer on request."

The Ellison proposal has won the approval of, among
others, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who said, "There
has to be some I.D. We have had a major catastrophe. This
is a very serious time. The country is at war. The purpose
here is to protect ourselves."

Dershowitz contends that the cards might actually increase
freedoms. "Four Arab-looking guys reading the Koran are
much less suspicious if they have the cards and can just
slash them through card readers," he said.

It is the lack of an I.D. card, however, that makes the
United States almost unique among nations. "You do have a
right to be left alone in the most literal sense," says Nadine
Strossen, president of the American Civil Liberties Union.

"If you have an I.D. card," says former Rep. Tom Campbell
(R-Calif.), now a law professor at Stanford, "it is solely for
the purpose of allowing the government to compel you to
produce it. This would essentially give the government the
power to demand that we show our papers. It is a very
dangerous thing."

Dangerous? Yes, there are dangers to a mandatory national
I.D. card, but there may be greater dangers without one.
The fact is, to live in a society as vulnerable as ours, we
may have to give up something - but I disagree that what's
lost is freedom. Instead, it's privacy, and maybe not even
that.

In an interview with SiliconValley.com, Ellison expressed this
reality in his typical over-the-top fashion, showing once
again why he is the wrong guy to be making the pitch.
"This privacy you're concerned about is largely an illusion.
All you have to give up is your illusions, not your privacy."

The truth is that an I.D. card may force you to give up
some of your privacy - though probably no more than
driver's licenses, Social Security cards, credit cards and
even electronic toll-readers like EasyPass force you to give
up now. But even if privacy is lost, the question is whether
such an exchange is worth the benefits? More and more, I
believe that it
is.

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